Don’t Look Now

"Don't look now," John said, "But two tables away, there are two older ladies who are trying to hypnotize me." Thus begins Daphne de Maurier's short story, which Nicolas Roeg managed to translate onto the big screen following several adaptations. The result is riveting: masterfully edited, with brilliant sound and visually dazzling. Don't Look Now is one of the most original horror films ever made. British critic Peter Bradshaw called the legendary scene of conjugal lovemaking probably the best, the most tender, and maybe just the truest sex scene in the history of cinema. In Roeg's film, sex is a weapon against death and the grief felt by the parents (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) of a little girl who died tragically. During a trip to Venice, where John is renovating a church, the couple meet two sisters, one of whom, a blind clairvoyant, claims to be in contact with the Baxters' dead daughter. Don't Look Now pulls us into the murky labyrinth of Venice, where the red coat of a mysterious ghost flashes by in wet alleys, drawing us into a world of visions, premonitions and signs. Past and future, chance and destiny are constantly intertwined in flashbacks and visions, depicted on-screen with an intense red color.

Małgorzata Sadowska

awards

BAFTA 1974 - Best Cinematography

Nicolas Roeg

Born in 1928, Nicolas Roeg is one of Britain's most original filmmakers: a director with passion who tears down the order of the classical narrative, a master of editing and an outstanding stylist. Probing with his camera deep into our obsessions, tormenting memories, unhealed collective and individual wounds and sexual fantasies, he broke down the on-screen division between past and present, proving - in a particularly brilliant way - that cinema is a time capsule. While struggling for years with rejection and being misunderstood, Roeg consistently followed the path of an outsider, not only setting his films outside Great Britain (in Australia, the Seychelles, Vienna), but also happily working with artists associated with counter-cultural rebellion (David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Art Garfunkel). Films that came to be appreciated a bit too late, such as Performance, Don't Look Now, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Bad Timing, are iconic works: visually stunning, engaging, provocative fairy tales for adults.